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I know of only one distinguished exception, and he lives a thousand miles from here, in Bengal. 'No, not landscape, returned Mr. Kauffer; 'but that Indian nobleman will buy his portrait. We send our own man photographic artist to his State, and he photograph the Chief and his arab, the Chief and his Prime Minister, the Chief in his durbar, palace, gardens, stables everything.
My tone acknowledged with all humility that she was likely to know, and I did not deserve her doubtful glance. 'He could not certainly, she went on, with firmer decision, 'have been in the least ashamed of his connection with Kauffer. 'He comes from a country where social distinctions are less sharp than they are in this idiotic place, I observed.
Armour's work there. Mr. Kauffer, with his hands behind him, made the sound which has its counterpart in a shrug. 'Yass, he said, 'I haf some of Mr. Armour's work there. This one, that one, all those remaining pictures they are all the work of Mr. Armour. 'I didn't know that any of his things were to be seen outside his studio, I observed. 'So? They are to be seen here. There is no objection.
The situation was really monstrous, the fatuous rejection of all that fine scheming and exquisite manipulation, and it did not grow less so as Mr. Kauffer continued to unfold it. Armour had not, apparently, proceeded to the scene of his labours without instructions.
Most unwillingly I turned one morning into Kauffer's; and I can not now imagine why I did it, for emulation of the Assistant Adjutant-General was really not motive enough, unless it was with an instinct prepared to stumble upon matter germane in an absurd degree to this little history. I had the honour to be subjected to the searching analysis of Mr. Kauffer himself.
Armour told me himself that Kauffer's attitude had become almost conciliatory, that Kauffer had even hinted at the acceptance of, and adhesion to, certain principles which he would lay down as the basis of another year's contract. In talking to me about it, Armour dwelt on these absurd stipulations only as the reason why any idea of renewal was impossible.
Kauffer nearly fell upon my neck. 'That Kandore will buy it to put in one bonfire first, he assured me, and I sincerely hoped for his sake that it would be the case. 'Of course it's understood, I bethought me to say, 'that I get it, if I do get it, at Mr. Armour's price. I'm not a Maharajah, you know, and it isn't a portrait of me.
Kauffer continued with rising excitement, baited apparently by the unfortunate canvas to which he pointed, 'when Armour go to make that I say you go paint ze Maharajah of Gridigurh spearing ze wild pig. You see what he make? 'Well, I said, 'it is a wonderfully spirited, dashing thing, and the treatment of all that cane-brake and jungle grass is superb.
He mentioned to me that Kauffer had been asked for his address who could it possibly be? and looked so damped by my humourous suggestion that it was a friend of Kauffer's in some other line who wanted a bill paid, that I felt I had been guilty of brutality. And all the while the quality of his wonderful output never changed or abated. Pure and firm and prismatic it remained.
'Of course! said Kauffer, 'but I sink I sell you that Porcha; it is ze best of ze two. I ventured for a few days to keep the light which chance had shed for me upon Armour's affairs to myself. The whole thing considered in connection with his rare and delicate talent, seemed too derogatory and disastrous to impart without the sense of doing him some kind of injury in the mere statement.
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